Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents say they want to give their 5 year-old-boy with a brain tumor the best chance to live with a revolutionary new treatment they learned about on the Internet. Their British hospital says the boy has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of survival with the treatment it offers, and it’s the parents who are putting the child at risk.

Britain has become riveted by the case of little Ashya King, whose parents plucked him from a hospital in southern England and fled to Spain amid a dispute over treatment – with British justice close on the family’s heels.

Brett and Naghemeh King signaled Monday they would fight extradition, defying doctors and the legal system as a British court considers a ruling on forcing the family to come home.

“I’m not coming back to England if I cannot give him the treatment I want, which is proper treatment,” Brett King said as he cradled the child in a video posted before his arrest. “I just want positive results for my son.”

The Kings are seeking a new type of proton beam radiation therapy that typically costs at least $33,000. The Southampton General Hospital says that more conventional methods have a very high chance of succeeding. It said that while proton beam therapy is effective for some tumors, in other cases “there isn’t evidence that this is a beneficial treatment.”

The family fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States. Police pursued them. Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for an offence of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 years, hours after the Southampton hospital realized their patient was gone.

British authorities traveled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for being “proactive” rather than trying to explain later “why a child has lost his life.”

The hospital’s medical director, Dr. Michael Marsh, issued a statement late Monday saying that the treatment was discussed with the family.

He put the chances Ashya surviving under the hospital’s treatment at 70 percent to 80 percent after five years. He expressed sadness that communication with the family had broken down and that “for whatever reason they have lost confidence in us.”

Ethicists say the case is unprecedented, and has raised questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering with the will of parents in questions of life and death. While there have been many previous legal tussles over terminal illness issues, there have been few regarding questions over which treatment should be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

These kinds of cases normally result from a communication breakdown, said Penney Lewis, professor of law and a medical ethics expert at King’s College London. She said parents are typically only prosecuted when they fail to engage with the medical care entirely and the child dies as a result.

Yet Lewis said that when the hospital-family relationship does break down, it does not have to end like this. The parents or hospital could have sought mediation instead with a third party. “Not everything has to end up in court,” she said.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying Ashya has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. Brett King said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice, citing research he had gleaned on the Internet.

“I realized I can’t speak to the oncologists at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt that I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest, darkest hour I wouldn’t be there to look after him, neither would my wife,” he said. “They would prevent us from entering the ward. So under that such a cruel system, I decided to start looking at the proton beam myself.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects. But experts say the treatment isn’t suitable for children whose tumors are too advanced and need a broader dose of radiation.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

The couple are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

“This has nothing to do with parents abandoning their child or with religious beliefs,” the parents’ Spanish lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernandez said, adding they brought Ashya to Spain “out of their love for him.”

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents of a child suffering from a severe brain tumor signaled Monday they would defy efforts to force them to return to Britain, days after their family fled to seek a novel kind of radiation treatment for the 5-year-old boy.

A Spanish judge ordered Brett and Naghemeh King held for 72 hours while documents are translated and doctors are consulted. After that, the judge could extend their time in detention or release them.

The family had fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for a new treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States they hope will help their child. Police pursued them and issued an arrest warrant on suspicion of neglect after Southampton General Hospital realized their patient – 5-year-old Ashya King -was gone, without their consent.

British authorities have made no apology for the warrant and travelled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for “being proactive” than “potentially having to explain why a child has lost his life.”

The case has riveted Britain, which is proud of a health service that offers universal care. But the saga has also raised volatile questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering in some of the most sensitive of questions – and whether it has the right to insist that treatment dictates be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on the matter Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

They are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

Ashya’s grandmother told the BBC that it was an “absolute disgrace” that her son and daughter-in-law were accused of child neglect.

“They (the authorities) are the ones who are cruel because they have taken poor little Ashya who is dying of a brain tumor and they won’t let the parents, my son and daughter-in-law, they won’t let them see him at all,” Patricia King said. “It’s terrible. It is so cruel it is unbelievable.”

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying he has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option called proton beam therapy and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. The father, Brett King, said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice using research on the matter he gleaned on the Internet.

“They looked at me, straight in the face, and said with his kind of cancer, which is called a medulloblastoma, it would have no benefit whatsoever,” he said as he cradled his sick child on his lap. “Well, I went straight back to my room and looked it up, and the American sites and French sites and Swiss sites where they have proton beam, said the opposite, that it would be very beneficial for him.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

It wasn’t immediately clear why health care officials didn’t make this option available to Aysha.

—

Associated Press writers Jorge Sainz in Madrid and Maria Cheng in London contributed to this story.

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents of a child suffering from a severe brain tumor signaled Monday they would defy efforts to force them to return to Britain, days after their family fled to seek a novel kind of radiation treatment for the 5-year-old boy.

A Spanish judge ordered Brett and Naghemeh King held for 72 hours while documents are translated and doctors are consulted. After that, the judge could extend their time in detention or release them.

The family had fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for a new treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States they hope will help their child. Police pursued them and issued an arrest warrant on suspicion of neglect after Southampton General Hospital realized their patient – 5-year-old Ashya King -was gone, without their consent.

British authorities have made no apology for the warrant and travelled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for “being proactive” than “potentially having to explain why a child has lost his life.”

The case has riveted Britain, which is proud of a health service that offers universal care. But the saga has also raised volatile questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering in some of the most sensitive of questions – and whether it has the right to insist that treatment dictates be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on the matter Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

They are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

Ashya’s grandmother told the BBC that it was an “absolute disgrace” that her son and daughter-in-law were accused of child neglect.

“They (the authorities) are the ones who are cruel because they have taken poor little Ashya who is dying of a brain tumor and they won’t let the parents, my son and daughter-in-law, they won’t let them see him at all,” Patricia King said. “It’s terrible. It is so cruel it is unbelievable.”

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying he has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option called proton beam therapy and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. The father, Brett King, said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice using research on the matter he gleaned on the Internet.

“They looked at me, straight in the face, and said with his kind of cancer, which is called a medulloblastoma, it would have no benefit whatsoever,” he said as he cradled his sick child on his lap. “Well, I went straight back to my room and looked it up, and the American sites and French sites and Swiss sites where they have proton beam, said the opposite, that it would be very beneficial for him.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

It wasn’t immediately clear why health care officials didn’t make this option available to Aysha.

—

Associated Press writers Jorge Sainz in Madrid and Maria Cheng in London contributed to this story.

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents of a child suffering from a severe brain tumor signaled Monday they would defy efforts to force them to return to Britain, days after their family fled to seek a novel kind of radiation treatment for the 5-year-old boy.

A Spanish judge ordered Brett and Naghemeh King held for 72 hours while documents are translated and doctors are consulted. After that, the judge could extend their time in detention or release them.

The family had fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for a new treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States they hope will help their child. Police pursued them and issued an arrest warrant on suspicion of neglect after Southampton General Hospital realized their patient – 5-year-old Ashya King -was gone, without their consent.

British authorities have made no apology for the warrant and travelled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for “being proactive” than “potentially having to explain why a child has lost his life.”

The case has riveted Britain, which is proud of a health service that offers universal care. But the saga has also raised volatile questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering in some of the most sensitive of questions – and whether it has the right to insist that treatment dictates be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on the matter Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

They are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

Ashya’s grandmother told the BBC that it was an “absolute disgrace” that her son and daughter-in-law were accused of child neglect.

“They (the authorities) are the ones who are cruel because they have taken poor little Ashya who is dying of a brain tumor and they won’t let the parents, my son and daughter-in-law, they won’t let them see him at all,” Patricia King said. “It’s terrible. It is so cruel it is unbelievable.”

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying he has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option called proton beam therapy and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. The father, Brett King, said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice using research on the matter he gleaned on the Internet.

“They looked at me, straight in the face, and said with his kind of cancer, which is called a medulloblastoma, it would have no benefit whatsoever,” he said as he cradled his sick child on his lap. “Well, I went straight back to my room and looked it up, and the American sites and French sites and Swiss sites where they have proton beam, said the opposite, that it would be very beneficial for him.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

It wasn’t immediately clear why health care officials didn’t make this option available to Aysha.

—

Associated Press writers Jorge Sainz in Madrid and Maria Cheng in London contributed to this story.

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents of a child suffering from a severe brain tumor signaled Monday they would defy efforts to force them to return to Britain, days after their family fled to seek a novel kind of radiation treatment for the 5-year-old boy.

A Spanish judge ordered Brett and Naghemeh King held for 72 hours while documents are translated and doctors are consulted. After that, the judge could extend their time in detention or release them.

The family had fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for a new treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States they hope will help their child. Police pursued them and issued an arrest warrant on suspicion of neglect after Southampton General Hospital realized their patient – 5-year-old Ashya King -was gone, without their consent.

British authorities have made no apology for the warrant and travelled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for “being proactive” than “potentially having to explain why a child has lost his life.”

The case has riveted Britain, which is proud of a health service that offers universal care. But the saga has also raised volatile questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering in some of the most sensitive of questions – and whether it has the right to insist that treatment dictates be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on the matter Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

They are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

Ashya’s grandmother told the BBC that it was an “absolute disgrace” that her son and daughter-in-law were accused of child neglect.

“They (the authorities) are the ones who are cruel because they have taken poor little Ashya who is dying of a brain tumor and they won’t let the parents, my son and daughter-in-law, they won’t let them see him at all,” Patricia King said. “It’s terrible. It is so cruel it is unbelievable.”

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying he has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option called proton beam therapy and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. The father, Brett King, said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice using research on the matter he gleaned on the Internet.

“They looked at me, straight in the face, and said with his kind of cancer, which is called a medulloblastoma, it would have no benefit whatsoever,” he said as he cradled his sick child on his lap. “Well, I went straight back to my room and looked it up, and the American sites and French sites and Swiss sites where they have proton beam, said the opposite, that it would be very beneficial for him.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

It wasn’t immediately clear why health care officials didn’t make this option available to Aysha.

—

Associated Press writers Jorge Sainz in Madrid and Maria Cheng in London contributed to this story.

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents of a child suffering from a severe brain tumor signaled Monday they would defy efforts to force them to return to Britain, days after their family fled to seek a novel kind of radiation treatment for the 5-year-old boy.

A Spanish judge ordered Brett and Naghemeh King held for 72 hours while documents are translated and doctors are consulted. After that, the judge could extend their time in detention or release them.

The family had fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for a new treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States they hope will help their child. Police pursued them and issued an arrest warrant on suspicion of neglect after Southampton General Hospital realized their patient – 5-year-old Ashya King -was gone, without their consent.

British authorities have made no apology for the warrant and travelled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for “being proactive” than “potentially having to explain why a child has lost his life.”

The case has riveted Britain, which is proud of a health service that offers universal care. But the saga has also raised volatile questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering in some of the most sensitive of questions – and whether it has the right to insist that treatment dictates be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on the matter Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

They are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

Ashya’s grandmother told the BBC that it was an “absolute disgrace” that her son and daughter-in-law were accused of child neglect.

“They (the authorities) are the ones who are cruel because they have taken poor little Ashya who is dying of a brain tumor and they won’t let the parents, my son and daughter-in-law, they won’t let them see him at all,” Patricia King said. “It’s terrible. It is so cruel it is unbelievable.”

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying he has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option called proton beam therapy and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. The father, Brett King, said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice using research on the matter he gleaned on the Internet.

“They looked at me, straight in the face, and said with his kind of cancer, which is called a medulloblastoma, it would have no benefit whatsoever,” he said as he cradled his sick child on his lap. “Well, I went straight back to my room and looked it up, and the American sites and French sites and Swiss sites where they have proton beam, said the opposite, that it would be very beneficial for him.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

It wasn’t immediately clear why health care officials didn’t make this option available to Aysha.

—

Associated Press writers Jorge Sainz in Madrid and Maria Cheng in London contributed to this story.

Sep
01

Parents of ill UK boy fight extradition from Spain

KDWN

LONDON (AP) — The parents of a child suffering from a severe brain tumor signaled Monday they would defy efforts to force them to return to Britain, days after their family fled to seek a novel kind of radiation treatment for the 5-year-old boy.

A Spanish judge ordered Brett and Naghemeh King held for 72 hours while documents are translated and doctors are consulted. After that, the judge could extend their time in detention or release them.

The family had fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for a new treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States they hope will help their child. Police pursued them and issued an arrest warrant on suspicion of neglect after Southampton General Hospital realized their patient – 5-year-old Ashya King -was gone, without their consent.

British authorities have made no apology for the warrant and travelled to Spain to question the couple. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead, of Hampshire Constabulary, has said he would rather be criticized for “being proactive” than “potentially having to explain why a child has lost his life.”

The case has riveted Britain, which is proud of a health service that offers universal care. But the saga has also raised volatile questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering in some of the most sensitive of questions – and whether it has the right to insist that treatment dictates be followed.

Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman weighed in on the matter Monday, saying people all over the country have been moved by the family’s plight.

Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child.

They are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, but there has been no indication they raised any religious issue about the boy’s treatment.

Ashya’s grandmother told the BBC that it was an “absolute disgrace” that her son and daughter-in-law were accused of child neglect.

“They (the authorities) are the ones who are cruel because they have taken poor little Ashya who is dying of a brain tumor and they won’t let the parents, my son and daughter-in-law, they won’t let them see him at all,” Patricia King said. “It’s terrible. It is so cruel it is unbelievable.”

The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying he has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option called proton beam therapy and that it wasn’t being made available to him.

In a statement posted on YouTube before their arrest, the family took its case to the public after seeing their names and photographs posted on the Internet. The father, Brett King, said he feared being put under a restraining order after he disputed his doctors’ advice using research on the matter he gleaned on the Internet.

“They looked at me, straight in the face, and said with his kind of cancer, which is called a medulloblastoma, it would have no benefit whatsoever,” he said as he cradled his sick child on his lap. “Well, I went straight back to my room and looked it up, and the American sites and French sites and Swiss sites where they have proton beam, said the opposite, that it would be very beneficial for him.”

Proton beam therapy is a targeted type of radiation treatment that increases the chance of killing cancer cells by sending a higher dose of radiation directly to the tumor.

Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects.

In Britain, proton beam therapy is currently only available to treat certain patients with cancer in their eyes. Other countries, including the U.S., Switzerland and Japan, also use proton beam therapy to treat cancers of the spinal cord, brain, prostate, lung and those that affect children.

Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the U.S. and Switzerland for treatment.

It wasn’t immediately clear why health care officials didn’t make this option available to Aysha.

—

Associated Press writers Jorge Sainz in Madrid and Maria Cheng in London contributed to this story.